Tidy Brown Wren, bringing order to your nest

Our home is a work in progress.  Actually, my whole life is a work in progress! Ha! Big projects in the house aren't in the works right now since work on the greenhouse is still continuing.  Here it is in it's half painted stage.  Yes, it really is green!  Anyway, as I was saying.  . .  Small projects are all we can handle in the house right now.  One of those projects was tackling the lack of towel bars in our main bathroom.  We haven't done much in the bathroom except pull out the dropped ceiling and add a few lights.   For a temporary fix, I added a quilt rack to hold our towels. I felt like it was always getting in the way and tended to be top heavy when holding wet towels. I picked up some hooks from Hobby Lobby (when they were 50% off) and hubs attached them to some leftover 1 by 4s.  Then the wood was attached to the wall studs for stability.  The wood was already stained to protect it - but ...

I'm getting ready for Tidy Brown Wren's Spring Open House. And you're invited! Saturday, May 9, 2015 9:00-4:00 Wren Acres in Chesapeake, Virginia If you missed the Fall Open House, you'll want to make sure that you make it to this one.  Most items are one-of-a-kind, so you'll want to arrive early to get your favorite piece.   Email me tidybrownwren@gmail.com for directions

Most of the time, when I'm called in to help stage or organize a home, I encounter an overstuffed master bedroom. What I mean by overstuffed is too much furniture, too many clothes, and too many items that don't belong in a bedroom. A lot of people, including myself, tend to put stuff in the bedroom that doesn't belong because we don't know what else to do with it. It becomes a staging area for projects, laundry, exercise equipment, and "stuff". So how do we get from ransacked to restful? I thought you'd never ask! Here are some questions to ask yourself: 1. What do I want this room to feel like? Restful retreat, romantic getaway, or an inspired haven? 2. What pieces of furniture could be gotten rid of? Bookshelves, dressers, chairs, exercise equipment? 3. What items end up in your bedroom that don't belong there? Toys, paperwork, laundry? 4. Are there any repairs that need to be made? Loose handles, broken curtain rods, stuck doo...

So. . . you've set a New Year's resolution to organize and deep clean your house this year.  Sure, sure - you said that same thing last year, but this year you really mean it.  But now it's almost the end of January and you don't know where to start.   Well, today's the day.   I'll be blogging each month about an area to work on .  We'll take one area per month.  Don't try to do more than that one area a month and overwhelm yourself  because you'll want to quit.   And quitters never have clean homes! Ready?  Let's go! In January, you should work on the area where you enter your home.  Front door?  Back door?  It doesn't matter.  We'll just call it your home's entrance.   1.  Evaluate what you need in the area.  Think through your daily routine of entering and exiting.  Think about what you need to help your family get what they need and keep it organized. ...

I recovered a chair for my son's apartment a few months ago and I'm eager to show you the before and after photos.   This was the chair that we've had in our bedroom for at least 20 years.  My father in law originally got it from one of his older neighbors.  It was very sturdy, but very out dated and stained - and pink. I took the cushions off of the chair and removed all of the old fabric.  The cushions were still in good shape.  Then I spray painted the frame with Oil Rubbed Bronze paint.  After that, I stapled the new fabric (left over from a previous project) onto the cushion forms.  I needed to cover up some of the staples on the back of the chair but I didn't want to purchase anything.  Thankfully, I always save extra strings, ribbons, and trim.  Out of my basket of trim, came a wide brown shoe lace.  Perfect! Not bad for using supplies I already had on hand.   I made a pillow to go with it - ag...

Our utility room is finally finished and I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out. We hired a contractor to remodel our kitchen last year but our budget just couldn't be stretched enough to work on the connecting utility room.   When asked what I wanted for Christmas last year, I asked if we could work on the utility room/pantry this year.  Poor Hubs, I think he would have rather purchased a gift from the mall.  Even with a very limited budget and schedule, we worked on it steadily all year and just finished last week. It took several months of planning to figure out the layout but my Hubs is a genius and is very good at space planning.  He was so sweet to carefully consider all of my storage needs.  He measured all of my containers to make sure everything would fit. Some of the walls and all of the cabinets and the ceiling were torn out during our kitchen demo.  We hobbled along with our little torn up utility room for almost ...

 I've been busy preparing for a Tidy Brown Wren Open House this coming Saturday, November 15th.   After all, what's a mom to do when her last child moves out of the apartment over the garage?  It's too great of a space to just leave empty.  Want a sneak peak?  Lots of treasures that are upcycled, recycled, vintage, or just plain cool.   The shop will be open from 9:00 until 5:00.  Stop by and enjoy some delicious goodies and do some Christmas shopping.   Email me at tidybrownwren@gmail.com for directions.

 I'm so glad that red is my favorite color - and that shades of green can be found all around my house.  Why?  Because for the first few weeks of December, that was all that decorated my house.  Touches of red and green with one half-lit Christmas tree standing halfway between the family room and the dining room.   It's been such a crazy busy summer, fall, and now winter that I barely had time to clean my house let alone decorate for Christmas.  And decorating for Christmas is something I love to do.  I managed to find about 20 minutes a day for a whole week and finally got some decorations set out around the house.   Like I said before, the red and green colors I already had in our home really came in handy - all I had to do was add to it.   Ready for a tour before I have to take everything down this weekend? Here is the front porch.  My son found the old firetruck and refurbished it.  It is perfect to hold some ...